Make me a CIA agent to use sarcasm to bring down the government and bring down the country because this was all, of course, part of a worldwide conspiracy against the country.
BASSEM YOUSSEFPeople say, ‘Are you afraid? Are you scared for your life?’ and I tell them: If I choose today to tone it down, if I choose today to shut up, tomorrow me, you, and all of us will be forced to.
More Bassem Youssef Quotes
-
-
I think by the time I left Egypt, there was about like 400 accusations against me in the drawer of the public persecutor office. It’s a way for them to exhaust you, to push you, to put you under pressure, to distract you.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
What I saw day-to-day is like people who are actually asking for freedom, calling for freedom – protesting, singing, chanting, calling for the removal of the regime – plain and simple.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
I’m sure even in America, where you have, like, free speech people self-censor themself. And it’s not – it happens because of different reasons. Because maybe it’s politically incorrect, it doesn’t have to really to be put in jail.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
Everybody grows up with comedy. I mean, Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
People went out there and they wrote articles and went on television shows saying that I am an operative that the CIA who used Jon Stewart to recruit me. So Jon Stewart, who actually – a guy from America was used by the CIA in order to recruit me for the CIA and be.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
And of course there were clashes there because people, they tried to remove those protesters from Tahrir. And I was, like, doing my job as a doctor treating them.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
Satire has its limits. It is really up to the people to make the change. The satirist’s role ends at the screen.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
I always tell people that a revolution is not an event, it’s a process. It is a struggle. And it doesn’t usually go smoothly.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
The worst thing ever that you have to explain your joke because I was very disappointed trying to explain why the joke is funny for the interrogator.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
It is very difficult to imagine that you can actually get rid of a dictatorship that has been there for 60 years only in 18 days.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
The only the way that you can live and function without seeing the facts in front of you is to put yourself in a constant state of denial.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
People say, ‘Are you afraid? Are you scared for your life?’ and I tell them: If I choose today to tone it down, if I choose today to shut up, tomorrow me, you, and all of us will be forced to.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
It is very depressing to see that in the 21st century people are still using the same 1950s and ’60s style of propaganda.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
People would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.
BASSEM YOUSSEF -
It doesn’t matter if the truth is right there out in front of your eyes. You will find a way, a mechanism, in order to keep your own system of denial. So as I always say it, denial is a river that runs in the – in Egypt. So we became very good in that.
BASSEM YOUSSEF